by Akinwande Jordan
It’s commonplace to speak at length about the inter-thread or lack thereof between the Internet and our hazy concept of real life — or the offline world. Digital dualism, augmented reality, digital denialism, etcetera, and all the academic mumbo jumbo we apply to the belaboured discourse that spills into just how exhaustingly artificial the internet is. The internet, though a testament to human innovation, is a horror story in continuum; a horror story about an organic parasite configured by machines interested solely in a disastrous play where humans are the dramatis personae.
Yes, this is still a review of a rom-com.
In the Kayode Kasum-directed Reel Love, scripted by Ife Olujuyigbe, romance is the unintended consequence of endless surveillance and our obsession with constructing reality TV out of the lives of public figures. Reel Love follows Tomide Sage (Timini Egbuson), a self-proclaimed relationship guru a lá Will Smith in Hitch (2005) whose fastidiously curated online persona is touted as the blueprint for modern romance—until a single encounter unfastens his duplicity.
The plot begins with an ensuing argument with Rachel Monday (TJ Omosuku), an unassuming shop assistant, who is caught on video and sent spiraling through the digital ether, and outrage follows. Brands pull out, fans turn, and Tomide finds himself at the mercy of a narrative he can’t control. What begins innocuously as a PR crisis soon morphs into something more: a romantic collision, a flattening of ruses, an unmasking at the gala, one that forces both him and Rachel to confront the riotous, unscripted truth behind the roles they play.
Though straightforward and unglamorous, Reel Love puts influencer culture or, should I say — subculture under a necessary critical microscope. Granted, it’s a rom-com, but you can’t help but notice how morbid it is that both Tomide Sage and Rachel Monday are surface-level personifications of how hyper-commercialised and disharmonious the very fabric of modern romance is. Not that romance itself has always been devoid of greed.
The title itself serves as a double entendre, an overt allusion to the Instagram video feature and perhaps the make-belief overtones that fraught the lives of the characters as they all individually traverse between the search for authenticity and the maintenance of their fake lives. However, it’s not without its fallibility — Reel Love still finds itself adorned with the regular nollywoodisms you find in the middle-of-the-road Nigerian production.
Timini Egbuson is by no means a thespian or our generation’s Nigerian Denzel Washington; in fact, watching him act eerily reminds you of fictional movie star Vincent Chase in HBO’s Entourage: very pretty, should not partake in Shakespeare. TJ Omosuku fills the talent void between both leads, steering clear of the irksome habit of simply reciting your line sans heft or the good ol’ actor’s naturalism. The film boasts of other stars like Shaffy Bello and Funke Akindele, but their stardom blows off no lid.
The verdict we shall say is this: what you are really seated for is the potentiality of a love story that lights up your loins — you do get that — but upon closer inspection, you are gazing at a horror story about the erosion of self, a disconnection from the real and how the tissue of love has been dissolved the acid vat of our own brewing.
